Volume 23 Issue 2 - October 2017

is just out on a welcome new recording of
Laks’ three surviving string quartets by the
Messages Quartet (DUX 1286).
The members of the ARC Ensemble
(Joaquin Valdepeñas, clarinet; Erika Raum,
Marie Bérard, violin; Steven Dann, viola;
Winona Zelenka, cello; David Louie, Diane
Werner, piano; Sarah Jeffrey, oboe; Frank
Morelli, bassoon) are all notable soloists
who teach at the Royal Conservatory’s Glenn
Gould School. Laks provides plenty of opportunities
for each to shine individually. But it’s
their thrilling ensemble work that makes the
most compelling case for Laks’ music.
Pamela Margles
Meditations and Tributes
Matthew Nelson
Soundset Records SR 1087 (soundset.com)
! This selection of
solo clarinet works,
distinct in character
and technical
demand, stands as
testimony to the
fine effort and abilities
of clarinettist
Matthew Nelson. A
who’s who of contemporary composers populates
Meditations and Tributes, including
Kaija Saariaho, Franco Donatoni, Karel Husa
and Krzysztof Penderecki. Nelson’s technical
assurance allows all their diverse musical
ideas to reach the listener; here is a wealth of
material for the unaccompanied instrument
(much more than can be mentioned in a short
review), masterfully played.
Out of the darkness, Saariaho’s Duft flutters
into audible range to open the disc. The
title translates as “scent.” I balk at kinaesthetic
associations with music, though some
may not. A coincidental segue between the
final pitch of Flüchtig (the third Movement of
Duft) and the first of Joël-François Durand’s
La mesure des choses might mislead an
inattentive listener. Durand’s style is very
distinct from Saariaho’s, however, so the illusion
doesn’t last. The former is active yet
meditative, the latter full of intense, almost
violent motion. Following Saariaho and
Durand is Donatoni’s Clair, a two-movement
work from 1980. Donatoni’s music
is manic, even obsessive, in its manner of
motivic evolution, but somehow lyrical and
gorgeous. The other works presented are all
either stand-alone pieces or triptychs, but
Donatoni pairs two balanced movements, as
he often did. Bent Sørensen’s Songs of the
Decaying Garden is lovelier than the title (or
the composer’s reputation for terrifyingly
difficult music) might suggest. The haunting
Prelude by Penderecki closes this excellent
collection.
Nelson includes his own well-written
liner notes, supplemented by three of the
composers describing their own pieces:
Durand, Bruce Quaglia, and Marc Satterwhite.
Max Christie
Gregory Mertl – Afterglow of a Kiss;
Empress; Piano Concerto
Solungga Liu; Immanuel Davis; University
of Minnesota Wind Ensemble; Craig
Kirchhoff
Bridge Records 9489 (bridgerecords.com)
! Ever-changing
restless rhythms,
often punctuated
by sudden blasts of
brazen colour, make
these works by
American Gregory
Mertl (b.1969)
compelling listening, even throughout the
42-minute duration of his Piano Concerto.
In the CD booklet, Mertl writes that he
intended “to subvert” the traditional model
of a piano concerto in which the “pianist
is hero,” choosing instead to “compose a
concerto where the soloist would discover
herself over the course of the work.” His
Piano Concerto certainly sounds different –
not least because the accompanying winds
and percussion, lacking strings, create an
icy, “heavy metal” backdrop for the piano,
strongly played by Solungga Liu.
Jagged, almost jazzy syncopations dominate
the Piano Concerto’s first and third movements.
The second movement, the longest at
17 minutes and the only movement with a
title – Coupling – is a slow, seemingly improvised
ambulation by the piano with the
orchestra providing chordal pedal points
and, as in the outer movements, occasional
declamatory outbursts.
The sprightly seven-minute Afterglow of a
Kiss for solo flute (Immanuel Davis), winds,
strings, harp, celeste and percussion shares
the Piano Concerto’s sense of improvisation,
busy rhythms and glittery sonorities. I found
the atmospheric, 12-minute Empress for
winds, strings, harp and percussion particularly
evocative, with melodic threads continually
emerging from and disappearing into a
tapestry of timbres.
Mertl’s distinctive style here receives vivid
support from conductor Craig Kirchhoff, who
commissioned the Piano Concerto, and the
University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble.
Michael Schulman
You Haven’t Been; Me to We; The Current
Agenda; Love in 6 Stages
Frank Horvat
Iam who Iam Records LTLP05 - LTLP08
(frankhorvat.com)
! Frank Horvat
is one of the most
inventive songwriters
to come out
of the contemporary
scene in Canada.
Although not a fullblooded
minimalist,
his music is
frequently spare-sounding, unmistakable,
with its repetitions of cell-like phrases, often
built on brightly coloured piano sounds,
sometimes enhanced by bright horns and
mallet percussion, soothing strings and
vocals. Best of all, Horvat’s work is exquisitely
eventful and almost insidiously effective.
Horvat has also recently found another way
in which music can be organized: around
rhythmic ideas instead of around structure,
where rhythm forms the structural basis of
the music instead of merely being a necessary
ornament. Moreover, Horvat’s ideas are
suspended in a kind of bohemian dynamic
and come alive in their thrilling combinations
of trademark repetitions and overlappings
with an almost ceremonial theatrical
grandeur.
His recent work
comprises You
Haven’t Been,
music for solo
piano; Me to We,
which is music
written for duo and
trio settings, The
Current Agenda,
which is a dark record of music featuring
solo, duo, trio and quartet music, intensely
socialist in nature, and Love in 6 Stages, a
work where minimalism meets art song and
where the two milieus collide in the visceral
physicality and psychology of love. Clearly
it appears time for Frank Horvat to take the
gloves off musically and declare that he is free
to roam as he pleases, wherever the music
beckons. In return for such dramatic freedom,
he returns the favour by recording the events
of this long and difficult expedition in deeply
personal and profoundly beautiful music.
Of the four recordings recently released,
Me to We and You Haven’t Been are so deeply
personal that listening to the music on each
requires an intrusive mindset. In the former
recording the probing duos appear to tear
through the composer’s innards not simply
to discover his heart, but to gather its myriad
pieces and bind them back together again.
This is done, at Horvat’s urging, through dark,
warm sounds that evoke healing, through
music that is mysterious and exotic as well
as long-limbed and almost aria-like without
the vocals.
On The Current
Agenda Horvat
focuses his outward
vision and glares at
the world in all its
nakedness. What he
sees results in music
filled with anger,
a mesmeric and
hypnotic visual account of a world gone mad.
Portentous piano and deep, chanting voices
meld with floating, reflective moments (as in
the solo piano of Lac-Mégantic), which return
eventually into haunting music, tumbling to
earth once again. Love in 6 Stages is the most
elevating of the four recordings. Between
Horvat’s piano (and its soporific
thewholenote.com October 2017 | 67